Home > Our Region > How Life Works > Ambassadors > JP Losman > JP Losman rolls up his sleeves to beautify Buffalo

J.P. Losman loves the vibrancy of city life. He likes to connect with people. He likes to feel the pulse of the community in which he lives.

The quarterback of the Buffalo Bills can tick off a dozen reasons why he thinks this city is a great place to be and why he chooses to live downtown, not in the suburbs. But feeling that bond with the city is at the top of the list.

"I feed off the energy of people," Losman said. "There?s great people-watching in Buffalo. I haven?t been to a better place in this country for peoplewatching than Elmwood Avenue. You will see all different facets of life, every different class, different styles. It?s very cultured. It?s amazing."

When Losman started to think about what he could do for the City of Buffalo, it?s no surprise his focus went to the grass-roots level. Lending his name to a project, donating a bunch of money and then handing it all off to subordinates is so not his style. If Losman is going to get involved, he?s going to roll up his sleeves and throw his heart into it.

So this summer, Losman created a project called Buffalo Lives, a nonprofit organization with a goal of beautifying Buffalo one block at a time.

Its first event will be held Saturday, when citizens will be invited to come to Niagara Square and participate in a morning-long cleanup of four downtown districts.

Anyone is welcome. Volunteers will pick up garbage, rake and mow lawns, clean graffiti, distribute recycling information and generally spruce up the streets.

"I?ve been living in Buffalo for three years," Losman said. "I?m driving the streets every day, going to shops, restaurants, bars, just mingling, going to work, and I?m just tired of driving down the street seeing trash. I?m tired of driving down the street seeing a tree that needs to be replaced, a spot where flowers or gardens should be. So I want to get something started."

The targets of Saturday?s cleanup "blitzes" are the Niagara Street corridor from City Hall to Porter Avenue; West Ferry Street from Niagara Street to Richmond Avenue; the intersection of Main and West Ferry; and Best Street from Main to Martin Luther King Park. Volunteers will be bused to some of the districts.

"I want to focus on urban, downtown Buffalo, the heart of the city," Losman said. "That?s where the biggest need is. You go to Amherst and Orchard Park, and it?s beautiful. Most of these people are kind of nervous driving into downtown, afraid to get lost, afraid to make a wrong turn. They kind of want to just stay in commercialized areas. I can see why. With new trees, less trash, less graffiti, I think it would feel like a safer environment, a more stressfree environment."

Losman is funding the project himself, but he has enlisted the cooperation of the city, the Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy, Perennial Landscaping, Laidlaw Transportation and other community organizations like Keep Western New York Beautiful.

Volunteers are invited to bring work gloves or small hand tools, but work gloves and T-shirts will be provided, and lawn care equipment will be supplied.

Follow-up projects will be planned to target other areas and to plant trees, flowers and shrubs in the fall.

"We think this is a great idea," said Oswaldo Mestre, the city?s director of citizen services. "J.P. came to the mayor earlier this summer with the idea, and we were very excited about somebody of his stature committed to creating a good selfimage of Buffalo." Overdue recognition

Losman came up with the name Buffalo Lives and wrote the copy for the Web site, www.buffalolives.org. "When you pick a name, you ask yourself, what are we trying to get accomplished?" he said. "We?re planting things that are going to be alive and stay alive. It?s not a dying city. It?s a city moving forward.

"It?s a city that has had the greatest number of comebacks in the last couple of years, according to some studies of the number of people moving back to their communities," Losman said. "It was just rated in Forbes magazine as one of the coolest cities in America for nightlife, culture, art, music. It is being recognized, but the actual people of Buffalo need to recognize it."

The 26-year-old Losman is a native of Venice, Calif., and spent his college years at Tulane University in New Orleans. After being drafted by the Bills in 2004, he moved into a downtown condominium. Last year, he bought a house on Oakland Place, near Women and Children?s Hospital.

"The old-style homes in the city ? they were built to last," Losman said. "Whereas you go to California, and they box you in like rice. The homes are twice as expensive as here in Buffalo and twice as small and twice as close together. There?s no backyard.

"On any given night, you can hear good music," Losman said of Buffalo. "On any given night, you can go to many great restaurants. People do take pride in the area, but I think people need to realize they can take more of a leadership role in their community than they realize."

Asked what surprised him most about Western New York when he moved here, Losman said, "All the beautiful natural resources that Buffalo has that people tend to overlook. The Olmsted Parks system is amazing. You have Lake Erie ? the boating, the water sports, the fishing. I?m looking 30 to 40 feet deep and I can see down to the bottom. It?s clear. I?m not necessarily saying it?s a perfectly clean lake. But I?m from California, and you go on some of the water where I?m from and it?s terrible. People don?t have that perspective on it, for some reason.

"It?s been hard to figure out why people say Los Angeles is such an amazing place and why people say Buffalo is such a dying, old, dirty, ugly city," Losman said. "I don?t understand that because I don?t see that. A lot of people that live here don?t see that. But some people kind of accept that mindset."

Jim Pavel, president of the community group Keep Western New York Beautiful, thinks the fact that Losman actually lives in the city lends more legitimacy to the Buffalo Lives idea.

"He?s made it his home," Pavel said. "He?s more of a Buffalonian than a lot of people I know.

"This isn?t a one-shot thing," Pavel said. "He?s looking at this as a long-term effort. His leadership has brought together a lot of different parties that don?t always come together, and there is a need for this. Buffalo needs to encourage its citizens to get involved."

Losman went back to Los Angeles to visit his family after last season. He took vacations to Mexico and Australia in the offseason. But he has lived here year-round since he was drafted. He was back in Buffalo working out Jan. 22 this year. Buffalo on the brain

"We were having lunch [in January], looking out at the ocean, and it?s absolutely beautiful," said Losman?s agent, Gary Wichard, who is based in Pacific Palisades, Calif. "And J.P. says, ?You know what? I?m cutting this short. I?m going back on Friday, not Saturday.?

He wanted to get back to Buffalo," Wichard said. "Buffalo is in his wheelhouse. His comfort level is there."

Losman realizes the fact he grew up in California makes people expect him to complain about the weather.

"Every one of my friends from California who come to the city all say the same thing," Losman said. "It?s 25 or 30 degrees outside, a clear night. It?s beautiful. You?ve got long pants on and a sweat shirt, a hoodie. It?s cool. If you take a deep breath there is no crisper, cleaner air I?ve ever breathed in my life. You go to California, I don?t care how pretty it is there or in Florida, you won?t get that clean air. The clean air, that?s something I think is overlooked."

Losman has two years to go on his contract with the Bills. He needs to play well this year to convince the Bills to give him a contract extension after this season. He also knows the better he does on the field, the more impact he can have with Buffalo Lives.

"I know a lot of it rides on the success that I have on the football field," he said. "The goal is to win games, get to the playoffs, win in the playoffs. And personally, a goal of mine is to make the Pro Bowl. If a Pro Bowl quarterback in the City of Buffalo asks the United Way to come in and join a project, of course they would want to be a part of it. The better I do on the football field, the more we could get from outside national sources.

"I?m planning on being here for a while," Losman said. "I?m planning on success."

mgaughan@buffnews.com